Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

Isn’t it nice to know that your Headstart and Cancer Care money is going to projects like this-

Navy Ship Can’t Meet Mission, Internal U.S. Report Finds

By Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News

May 6, 2013 9:49 PM ET

“The LCS (Littoral Combat Ship) program today is one of our very best programs,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told the House Armed Services Committee on April 16. “It’s coming in under budget. It’s coming in on schedule. And it’s coming in with capabilities that we have to have.”

The Navy has 20 vessels under contract out of a planned fleet of 52. Construction costs have doubled to $440 million per ship from an original goal of $220 million.

…

Key to the Littoral Combat Ship’s success is fulfilling its planned capability of switching within 96 hours the vessel’s weapons modules for missions, such as finding mines, conducting anti-submarine operations and waging surface warfare.

The confidential report found, though, that the 96-hour goal doesn’t represent the entire process of switching weapons modules. The clock only starts when the module and everything ready to support it are dockside, the report said.

One wargame demonstrated that “getting all of the right people and equipment on station to conduct the exchange could take several weeks,” according to the report, and that process “removed LCS from the tactical fight.”

…

The Perez report also highlights the vessel’s limited combat capability. The Navy has acknowledged that the vessels are being built to the service’s lowest level of survivability, a Pentagon-approved decision that sought to balance cost and performance.

The ship “is not expected to be survivable in that it is not expected to maintain mission capability after taking a significant hit in a hostile combat environment,” Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester, said in a January report.

Even in its surface warfare role, when all armaments are working as intended, the vessel “is only capable of neutralizing” small, fast-attack boats and it “remains vulnerable to ships” with anti-ship cruise missiles that can travel more than five miles (8 kilometers), according to the Perez report. Iran has 67 such vessels, according to a chart in the report.

Because they couldn’t make up their mind this new ship is being sourced from two different vendors, negating any cost saving from standardization.  Remind you of anything?  Why yes, the two engine controversy from the F-35, another boondoggle brought to you by our friendly arms merchants at Lockheed; so it’s no surprise to learn that they’re one of the 2 prime vendors with an all Aluminum trimaran which just dissolves in salt water.

But what I’d like to focus on is that 5 mile range.  You’d get better results stationing a couple of guys with Stingers on a tanker deck.  In Harpoon (favorite game ever) we had a word for ships like that-

Targets.

“Dasvidania Rodina,” (traditional salute as Russian ships begin their attack runs).